IS GOD FOLLOWING YOU ON FACEBOOK?

Is God Following You on Facebook?

“Please pray for me. I’m starting a new job and I’m really nervous”

“Fido is having a cyst removed today, please pray for our fur baby.”

“Prayers needed as we embark on this new journey in life.”

We all see them in our Facebook feed. People ask for prayers for everything from serious illnesses and catastrophic losses to open houses on their homes up for sale. Please understand, I have great compassion for people going through genuine hard times and I am completely willing to give my time, physical labor, or tangible goods whenever possible. What I don’t feel comfortable with is the inundation of prayer requests and the impersonality that goes along with the responses. This situation raises a whole bunch of serious and not-so-serious questions in me.

First, when people respond with the various comments such as “prayers” or “praying for you” or the little prayer hands emoji, is that the actual prayer or are these people kneeling beside their beds at night or walking into church and saying to God “please help Betsy be successful at her new job and don’t let Fido’s cyst be malignant.” I feel like, for most people, the Facebook comment is the extent of their prayers for this person and they are moving right along to wish Michael a happy birthday and give a thumbs up to Susan’s cat meme.

This leads to my next question. If the praying hands emoji is the extent of a person’s prayers, how does God know that Betsy needs some support at her new job? Has he assigned some angel or saint up there in heaven to monitor everyone’s Facebook for prayer requests? That seems like a monumental task. I can’t even keep up with my own Facebook. Maybe there is a whole social media department up in heaven. I’m only touching on Facebook here, we can’t forget Twitter and Instagram and all the other social media platforms I don’t even understand. Is there a giant tally sheet of online prayer requests for Fido that is submitted to God at the end of the day before the results of Fido’s biopsy are complete?

Now my thoughts have moved on to my next question, one that extrapolates to prayer in general, not just social media. I think you may have guessed I am not a religious person, so I’m not really clear on how this prayer thing is supposed to work. If I am worried about something in my life and I pray on it, isn’t that enough for God to know I need his support? Does he sit up there and say, “David is worried about selling his house but I haven’t really heard any prayers from anyone else so I don’t feel there are enough people emotionally invested to intervene with the sale of David’s home.” Then Saint Peter runs over with a tally sheet, “No, look 87 people posted a praying hands emoji, 23 actually wrote the word prayers and another 52 said praying for you. That’s 162 people praying for David’s open house.” Is there a quota of prayers that needs to be met for each particular brand of hardship or new endeavor before God acts? How many individuals need to pray for each life event: Cancer-236, house fire-338, new job-1003, sick pet- animals supposedly don’t have souls and can’t go to heaven so He’s not answering those prayers anyway, winning the lottery-ha ha, those prayers go straight to the spam folder. Why are people asking for so many prayers, do they feel their single voice isn’t enough?

Am I the only one who finds the paradox of prayer and God’s plan mind boggling? People say “God has a plan for all of us”. So, if that is true, what good is prayer going to do? Your life itinerary is already posted. On April 19th, Mary is going to meet the love of her life in line at Starbuck’s so there is really no point in Mary praying that she meets someone nice on her online dating site. God has a plan for her. Larry’s wife has breast cancer which obviously must be God’s plan for her, yet Larry prays that she beats cancer, and Larry’s church prays that his wife beats cancer, and all of Larry’s 567 Facebook friends comment that they are praying for her. Does God change his plan for her and send her into remission because Larry sends money to Joel Osteen (I’m not going to open that can of worms today) and his followers pray for her? I genuinely don’t understand how the two concepts can coexist.

I want to hear your thoughts on this. Do you have the same questions? Or maybe some different ones related to this topic. Tell me, do you think God is following you on Facebook?